“Good grief,” Annie muttered, clearing the glass from a nearby dormer with her backpack, speed-walkers be damned. “New study finds majoring in literature may result in nefarious behavior.”
Annie tossed her bag over the casement and hoisted herself into the frame. Her years spent as a cut-rate gymnast were finally paying off. Laurel would be proud that all those participant ribbons could so nicely lead to a life of crime.
Holding her breath, Annie pushed aside the heavy black drapes which, according to the book, the duchess doused in oil four times per year. No surprise there, Annie thought. They smelled of something old and faraway.
“Yuck.” She coughed, and then covered her mouth.
Once all the way inside, Annie rested on the sill and assessed the room. Below her were scattered papers, a few books, and what appeared to be a collection of rib cages from small animals. No one could really die in the haunted house from some old book, right?
As her stomach seesawed, Annie jumped down.
She was in a dining room, judging from the long oak table that dominated the space. The chairs were gone. On the walls, rectangles marked the places artwork once hung. Annie treaded down the hallway. As she walked up the stairs, the wood made not a clonking sound but something squishier, like moss. Annie caught her breath at the top step, grateful that her mom wouldn’t have to suffer the stigma of a death-by-burgling obituary.
“All right, Grange,” she said. “Whatcha got for me?”
In the first bedroom, Annie found a bare mattress on the floor, beside it a collapsed bed frame filled with books. Hardy. Proust. Wharton. She was reaching toward one of the Hardys, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, when her hand brushed against something cold.
Annie leaped back. It was a revolver.
Choking and wheezing, she sprinted into the neighboring bedroom. Annie lived in hunt country but she’d never touched a gun.
“It’s just an old piece of metal,” she told herself, heart punching the inside of her chest. “It’s not like it can go off on its own.”
Or maybe it could. What did Annie know about firearms? What did she know about old lady ghosts who liked to shoot them while alive?
“Good grief, get a hold of yourself,” she said. “Ghost stories. Nothing more.”
Annie looped around the room four times in an effort to calm herself down.
“Annie,” she said. “Don’t be such a wuss.”
Inhaling, she surveyed the room. In it sat another bed, its frame intact. Beside the bed was a desk. On the desk, a typewriter. Annie craned her neck to more closely scrutinize the walls. Yep, those were bullet holes.
Aside from its one-inch frosting of dust, not to mention a healthy mountain of black soot accumulated in the fireplace, the room was relatively neat. A bed. A desk. A few pieces of paper. Annie’s dorm rooms were far worse. Where was all the clutter Gus promised? The old lady hoarding? This was starting to look like a waste of a misdemeanor.
Sighing, Annie crouched to inspect beneath the bed. That’s where the good stuff usually was. Even she had had incriminating evidence under hers back in the day. A roommate’s skirt borrowed without asking. A mostly empty vodka bottle. A pack of cigarettes, only one used.
“What, no guns?” Annie said. “Mrs. Spencer. I’m disappointed.”
Aside from dirt and grime and dead spiders, all that was under there was scattered paper, typewritten from the looks of it. With a gnash of her teeth, Annie stretched as far under the bed as she could muster and made contact with a few sheets. After dragging them out, she sat back on her heels, her knees gray from the dust.
“Transcripts?” she said, her eyes scanning the page.
The author’s notes? An interview? Annie flicked through the pages.
Surely you’d encountered the duke at some point.
You met at Blenheim, you said?
Come, Mrs. Spencer. Please sit back down.
She didn’t know if the pages had value or if they’d matter to anyone still alive. But ace researcher that she was, Annie did understand one thing. She was looking at the very start of the story, the place where The Missing Duchess began.
Fourteen
WS: You tell me you’re not the duchess.
GD: Because I’m not.
WS: But you ran in celebrated circles. Surely you’d encountered the duke at some point.
GD: Of course I met the duke.
WS: Because you were married to him.
GD: I’m sorry you think a lady must marry every man she meets.
WS: But his family reported, multiple times, that his missing wife is here, at the Grange. Mugnier the priest made similar statements.
GD: Yes, yes, I can see why a priest who died thirty years ago would know who lives in Oxfordshire today. Tell me, Seton, how long do you plan to go round and round like this? I’ve told you. I never loved the Duke of Marlborough.
WS: But you were married to him.
GD: We had no kind of marriage.
WS: But you knew him.
GD: Didn’t I just say that? Yes, of course I knew him! I have a crumb of social standing, for the love of Christ.
WS: How did you meet?
GD: The duke? Blenheim, I suppose. It’s hard to recall. It was his wife Coon who brought me round. She was my closest girl.
WS: Note to manuscript. Coon is Consuelo Vanderbilt, the prior Duchess of Marlborough.
GD: Note to manuscript. This author is a tosser. Who needs to be reminded of Coon?
WS: Okay, then. Tell me about your friendship with Consuelo. How did you meet?
GD: Actually, now that I think about it, I met her through the duke, instead of the other way around. Yes. That’s right. I encountered him at a London soiree when I was sixteen. Coon wasn’t there. She was recuperating from the birth of their first child. Wretched child, that.
WS: Your future stepson?
GD: You’ll never hear me claiming that wanker as part of my family. Anyhow, old Marlborough thought his wife and I would get along famously. He took me to Blenheim to meet her. Coon was in the doldrums and he wanted me to perk her up.
WS: You were sixteen when this happened?
GD: Yes. Why do I feel like I’m repeating myself?
WS: Very well. So the year was 1897.
GD: Yes. Wait! No! No. That’s just silly. It couldn’t have been 1897 as I would’ve only been two years old! [Laughs] A mere toddler!
WS: But instead you were sixteen?
GD: Yes. As I’ve mentioned. Repeatedly.
WS: Well, you’ve just implied you were born in 1895, and 1895 plus sixteen is 1911.
GD: Oh, the writer is good with numbers, is he?
WS: By 1911, the duke and duchess had been separated four years. She wasn’t recuperating from childbirth and in fact she’d already moved out of Blenheim and was living on her own.
GD: Well, perhaps I was younger. Maybe the year was … 1909? I would’ve been—
WS: Fourteen. By your math. But I saw your name in the guest registries at the palace, written in 1901.
GD: Ever hear of a transposition error? Sakes alive, do you fancy yourself a bloody mathematician or a writer? The year is not the point. The point is that Coon and Sunny—
WS: Note to manuscript. Sunny—
GD: Was the Duke of Marlborough. Earl of Sunderland. Ergo, Sunny. Jesus. Are you going to do this for our entire interview?
WS: I just might.
Fifteen
GD: She was beautiful, Coon was. Dark, exotic. She had these slightly slanting eyes.
WS: Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer is pushing at the corners of her eyelids, as if to demonstrate the slant. Now she’s rolling her eyes.
GD: [Snort] Coon had a touch of the Japanese about her.
WS: In contrast to your fair skin and those wide, haunting blue peepers of yours.
GD: Well, I wouldn’t call them haunting. But yes. The contrast made us stand out when jaunting about Paris. Italy and Germany, too.
WS: It must�
�ve been startling; the differences Sunny saw when he watched the two of you together.
GD: Forget Sunny. We enchanted half of Europe with our differences. Black and white. Dark and light. Though, of course, we were both beautiful. I can say that now that I’m as old as Methuselah.
WS: You’re still beautiful, Mrs. Spencer.
GD: Full of bollocks, but I appreciate the favor of your compliment. In any event, our personalities were as different as our visages. She was so shy, sweet Coon. Most didn’t know she was also hard of hearing. Her reputation for being snobbish was mostly due to this.
WS: “A black swan aloof in soundless waters.”
GD: Yes, that was my Coon. Poor thing, so depressed in that cumbersome palace. I tried to buoy her. Brighten her marriage, that home, her life. It was all so utterly, heartbreakingly without an ounce of cheer.
WS: Reports have you cheering multiple members of the home.
GD: Well, I tried. Hold on. Surely you’re not referring to Sunny?
WS: Why would I be referring to the duke?
GD: Let me tell you. I was a WELCOME distraction to Sunny and Coon.
WS: Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer smacked the table when she said the word “welcome.”
GD: That table won’t be the only thing smacked if you don’t knock it off.
WS: Mrs. Spencer, please continue.
GD: I can’t! I’ve completely lost my mind!
WS: Most would agree.
GD: Not my mind! My train of thought! You have me so befuddled. You’re a wretched conversationalist, you know that?
WS: My conversational skills are probably why I’ve become a writer. Come, Mrs. Spencer. Please sit back down. That’s better. Now. Please tell me why you were a welcome [Clap] distraction at Blenheim.
GD: Because the poor girl didn’t want to marry the man in the first place. Then he installed her in that god-awful monstrosity of an alleged home.
WS: Most find Blenheim unmatched in beauty and grandeur in the United Kingdom. Even the world, if not for Versailles. The royal family envies the palace. It’s better than anything they’ve got.
GD: I don’t give a damn about the royal family and their shit tastes. They’ve never had to live there. And they should count themselves lucky. Otherwise they’d be even more miserable than they already are.
WS: But the stately rooms? The gardens? The grottos?
GD: The palace was oppressive. Coon had a predilection for melancholy and that home sucked every ray of sunshine from the tender girl’s soul. She cried every night. She prayed for God to turn her into a vestal virgin.
WS: Vestal virgin?
GD: A woman freed of the social obligation to marry and bear children. Of course she was far too late for that.
WS: Sounds like Coon had a glum personality.
GD: She wasn’t a zippy sort, no. But let me tell you, when the Marlboroughs separated and she moved to London, Coon flourished as a single hostess.
WS: And after she made her move, you swooped in and made yours.
GD: I’ve haven’t swooped a day in my life.
WS: When Coon left Sunny, and was finally happy, you were free to pursue your best friend’s husband, free to consummate the simmering attraction you’d felt for a decade.
GD: Attraction. Ha. Give me some credit.
WS: Your stepson reported that you behaved shamelessly toward Sunny, even when he was married to your Coon.
GD: You mean Henry? He’s about as reliable as a drunk. Did I flirt with Sunny? Yes. At times. Just as I flirted with five to eleven other men in a given evening. There’s nothing wrong with a little Parisian flirtation, as my mother always said.
WS: Parisian flirtation usually refers to sex. Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer’s face has reddened.
GD: Listen here, you tosser. In those years, Coon meant everything to me. Could you imagine? If I’d been in love with my best friend’s husband?
WS: Yes. I can imagine. “She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”
GD: ARE YOU QUOTING EDITH WHARTON AT ME?
WS: Ah. The woman has a sharp ear for literature.
GD: Edith was my friend. And she would be outraged, a hack like you vomiting up her sublime words.
WS: So you’re angrier at my quoting of Edith Wharton than with the implication you stole your best friend’s husband?
GD: For God’s sake, yes! Because the implication is so ridiculous. Coon was my best friend.
WS: But it happens, Mrs. Spencer. It happens all the time.
GD: Stealing someone’s husband is an awfully big responsibility. If a woman chooses that path, she’d better be damned sure the man is worth the effort. And lest there be any doubt, most men are decidedly not.
Sixteen
THE GEORGE & DRAGON
BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
NOVEMBER 2001
Gladys’s mother was pregnant with her fourth and final daughter, Dorothy, when her marriage took its final hit.
The pregnancy itself was a source of contention, as Edward Deacon suspected the baby wasn’t his. Not an unreasonable fear given the hours his wife spent in Abeille’s company, and the time Edward saw the two of them exiting a lingerie shop together. And who was the first person to lay eyes on baby Dorothy after she was born? Abeille himself. Edward was inflamed.
“All French women receive these platonic visits from their men friends while they are lying-in,” Florence claimed, always quick to chalk up bad behavior to Parisian sensibilities.
His wife wasn’t French and so Edward remained unswayed by the country’s customs. Adultery was adultery, especially when one was from the States.
Not that Florence or Abeille were concerned by Edward’s fury or his threats. To them he was nothing but a silly, harmless dilettante. They certainly did not consider him the type of man who’d chase his wife’s lover about a room and then shoot him three times through a couch.
—J. Casper Augustine Seton,
The Missing Duchess: A Biography
Annie found Gus in the same corner booth, sipping his same type of cider. How many years had he done this for? she wondered.
“Hello,” she said and tapped his shoulder. “I hoped I’d find you here.”
“This is a refreshing development,” Gus said, removing his glasses. He folded up the paper in front of him and went to stand.
“No, please,” she said. “Don’t get up.”
Annie sat across from him.
“Mind if I join you?”
“I believe you already have,” he said with a smile, an echo of her words from the day before. “So, working hard as per usual?”
“Work?” She blinked.
“Your thesis?”
“Oh right.” She sagged in her seat. “Yes. Well, I’m kind of stalled out right now.”
“Perhaps you should focus on your research,” he said with a wry smile. “Instead of whatever you’ve been getting into today. Your clothes are filthy.”
Annie glanced down. It looked like someone had dredged her in dust. Pinching together her fingers, she lifted a string of cobwebs from her jeans.
“I borrowed one of the inn’s bikes this morning,” she said. “I guess I’m a messy cyclist. Now that you mention it…”
“What did I mention?”
“I went past the Grange today on my ride.”
In lieu of a response, Gus took a sip of cider.
“You know, the Grange?” Annie said, forehead lifted. “Home to Mrs. Spencer? And to Pru?”
He nodded, lips pinched together, gray eyes holding steady with hers.
“You didn’t tell me it was, like, around the corner,” she said.
Gus cleared his throat.
“Didn’t I?” he said.
“You did not.” Annie shifted in her seat. “And, boy, did I get the wrong impression of the place. You made it seem so massive. Hulking.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep. But it was pretty much just a regula
r house. What’s up with that? The story. What I saw.” Annie held her hands at two different levels. “They don’t match up.”
“I don’t recall ever commenting on its size.”
“But what about Pru? When she walked through, she felt like the home was changing and growing around her.”
“She did, but in a way that had little to do with verifiable square meters.”
“And the inside, it was…”
Gus’s eyebrows shot up.
“The inside was what?”
Annie stopped, then added in a lame mumble: “Probably more cavernous.”
“Any other observations?” Gus asked, eyeing her, sizing her up. “About the property? From the road, naturally. Because you have more sense than to trespass.”
“You bet! Tons of sense! I’d never do anything like that!”
“That’s a relief,” he said. “So is this why you tracked me down? To express your disappointment in the home’s size and make promises as to your ability to follow laws?”
“Yes. That.” Annie pulled the book from her backpack, careful not to let any stolen papers sneak out. “But also The Missing Duchess. I need more.”
She slid the book toward Gus.
“For example,” she said. “How long after Pru came to work for Mrs. Spencer did the author show up? Didn’t you say it was around Christmastime?”
“Yep,” he said, and drained the last of his cider. “Late December. Ned! Hey, barkeep! How ’bout you bring me two more? One for now, one for the road.”
“Sure thing, mate,” the man said and sniggered amiably. “One for the road. As if you could ever hold out that long.”
Gus turned back toward Annie.
“So,” he said. “Is this how it aims to be? The young researcher batters the local fogy with questions, no time for pleasantries and how-do-you-dos?”
“I’m sorry,” Annie said with a wince. “My manners are, shall we say, blunted these days. My mom would be appalled. Let’s start over. So. How are you this afternoon?”
“I’m adequate.” He smirked.
“Nice weather, eh?”
“Not particularly.”
“So, uh, what do you do in your free time? Hobbies or anything?”
“You’re looking at it.”
I'll See You in Paris Page 8
